Senator Clinton's Fearmongering Won The Day
Senator Clinton didn't win New Hampshire because she cried. Yet here's how the very serious cable news logic (which is on the same deductive level as, say, Pictionary) sussed out Tuesday night: Senator Clinton went all soft-serve on television; women turned out and voted for Senator Clinton; therefore all of the weak, hormonorific dames, who are suckers for a tear-jerker, won the day for the senator.
Even if the crying wasn't a calculated news cycle grabber, narrating the entire victory as some kind of romantic chick-flick represents a misogynistic low point in non-FOX cable news punditry (FOX News punditry is quarantined within its own private phantom zone of hellish awfulness).
It's a low point for punditry -- not specifically in the context of Senator Clinton herself, but much more so in terms of the women of New Hampshire -- all of them -- who were unfairly painted as easily-manipulated hooples. (I'll get into the equally creepy "every black voter in South Carolina is waiting to see how white people vote" concept some other time.)
But let's rewind here. The presidential campaign coverage has been whipping the enthusiasm out of us for more than a year now. In that interminable length of time, Senator Clinton has been widely pegged as the frontrunner.
Being a shamelessly overzealous supporter of Senator Obama, even I will concede that there's no damn way anyone, however superhuman, could realistically reverse that trend in the span of what amounted to a long weekend between Iowa and New Hampshire.
Remember that Senator Obama remained in second place in the New Hampshire polls as recently as Sunday. Zogby, for instance, didn't really show Senator Obama in the lead until Monday -- a matter of hours before Dixville Notch. Couple that with an extraordinarily popular ex-president on the ground in New Hampshire attacking Senator Obama for that entire time, and you have to wonder how in the world Senator Obama came within a miraculous 2 percentage points (and a tie in terms of delegates) on Tuesday.
But wait. There's one other catalyst in Senator Clinton's victory which I believe carried more weight than is being discussed. It definitely carried more weight than the "crying."
When I wrote my endorsement of Senator Obama last month, I noted Senator Clinton's penchant for being a little too Cheney-ish to receive my primary season support. This week, she proved me accurate when she made with the Cheney-ish fearmongering just in time to scare the White-Mountain-sized-cockadoody out of New Hampshire voters.
"I don't think it was by accident that al-Qaeda decided to test the new prime minister. They watch our elections as closely as we do, maybe more closely than some of our fellows citizens do. Let's not forget you're hiring a president not just to do what a candidate says during the election, you want a president to be there when the chips are down."
In other words, the terrorists will surely attack us if a "less experienced" president is elected. So vote for Senator Obama if you want the evildoers to kill us all.
We've heard this line before:
"If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again -- that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States." -Vice President Dick Cheney, 9/07/04Or...
"Whoever is elected in November faces the prospect of another terrorist attack. The question is whether or not we have the right policies in place to best protect our country. That's what the vice president said." -Cheney spokeswoman Anne Womack "clarifying" the vice president's fearmongering
We know the record. It's not just Cheney. Karl Rove, Rudy Giuliani, and President Bush himself have all engaged in this kind of manipulation -- this kind of political terrorism -- to achieve their political goals -- especially when times and polls are tough.
"Shouting 'fire!' in a movie theater" has been an effective Bush administration strategy for many more years than should have been allowed by law. And when the tide was turning against Senator Clinton this week, she inaugurated herself into the elite He-Man Fearmongers Club with what was, for me, one of the most shocking moments on the Democratic side of the campaign. She even nailed the "it's no accident" Cheney line, i.e. "it's no accident there hasn't been another attack."
In an MSNBC exit poll, New Hampshire voters were asked the usual terrorism question: "How worried are you that there will be another major terrorist attack in the United States?"
73 percent responded "very / somewhat worried."
If the Clinton campaign didn't have similar polling information in hand leading up to the senator's ooga-booga! remarks on Monday, the senator's campaign strategists weren't doing their jobs. I would be shocked if the most poll-driven political campaign in the race didn't have New Hampshire data on terrorism. Nothing is said that isn't polled for effect. That's modern politics, especially within the Clinton Loop. Without the proper intel, she never would have stood up at that Dover rally in front of live television cameras and leaned on the jolly, candy-like panic button: a vote for Senator Obama is a vote for another terrorist attack -- because the evildoers are watching!
And we're somehow expected to believe that Senator Clinton's almost-crying, voice-crackling soundbyte catapulted her to victory on Tuesday? That's rich. As much as I'd like to believe that fearmongering doesn't work anymore, it just isn't possible that the senator's "al-Qaeda is watching" toe-monster moment didn't have a more significant effect on the election results than her misty "this is very personal for me" remarks.
The too-close-to-call results from Tuesday night indicate that this whole fracas is just about to get uglier (quoting Patton: "God help me I love it so!"). And, like it or not, they're going to smack us with the Fear Stick while leaning down hard on the panic button all along the way. Just keep a mental tab of who's doing it and how. Then vote against those candidates. Make them the scaredy-cats. Al-Qaeda might be watching -- but so are we.
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Will you marry me, Bob?
"you want a president to be there when the chips are down."
You don't?
Notice the little dust-up that developed when an assclown ideologue was squatting at 1600 Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001?
"In other words, the terrorists will surely attack us if a "less experienced" president is elected. So vote for Senator Obama if you want the evildoers to kill us all." ??
Mother Nature doesn't like it when you put words in the mouths of others... especially if they're "in other words". Kinda tough for a candidate to tout her own reliability in unsettled times (that IS what they ALL do, isn't it?) without being accused of swingin' the 'fear stick', ain't it?
Usually appreciate your commentary, but you're off the rails on this one... I guess, a natural consequence of pledging your affections to a particular candidate. Go for it. You're certainly entitled, but consider a short disclaimer at the beginning of your future articles.
The only thing I will remember about you article is "ooga-booga!"
This is an "ooga-booga" post!
You are wronga!
"Ooga-booga" did not frighten New Hampshire to vote for Hillary Clinton!
Barack Obama concentrated 90% of his energies and strategies on Iowa and deserved to win. But he rested on his oars and was fooled by the polls to take things for granted and he lost.
Hillary Clinton worked harder than the rest in New Hampshire and again, the people of New Hampshire have a history of supporting women in democracy.
ooga wooga has spoken!
May the force be with you.:)
Please! Obama issued an outrageously inflammatory rhetoric on Pakistan this August when it was obvious to everyone that it was spinning out of control. He vowed to deploy US troops to the country, regardless if Musharraf approved, and threatened to violate its national sovereignty to hunt down "terrorists." Oh, and Axelrod didn't help by stating that Clinton was basically a co-conspirator in Bhutto's assassination.
If you want to apply standards, apply them to all, not just one.
Besides, the world HAS gone completely batshit. We do need to talk about it. We can't just "hope" nothing happens.
No, I am not a Clinton supporter. Edwards is the only one who's foreign policy isn't completely crazy like Clinton and her political twin, Obama. They are beyond hawkish.
I'm far more concerned that the MSM is talking only about the two corporatist candidates than I am about any little spats between the two.
McClurkin/Cuomo 2008
Something for all the various prejudices of the Democratic frontrunner's bases!
What's worse is that if the dust settles and Clinton is the nominee, she's going to have a LOT of apologizing to do to a whole lot of people who are essentially pissed at her for running such a brutal campaign (especially against Barack Obama). And to a degree, that's all she can probably do at this point. Her only hope is to scare us all so much that we forget how she's acted like she was "entitled" and the "inevitable" winner. How she hired a team to dig up dirt on the other candidates, then ala Mitt Romney, leaked that info when it turned out to be not solid enough to Fox News. Then whenever things look bad, she whips out Bill, a leader that many of us respected, to trash on our choice of candidate.
After all that, fearmongering is her only hope to make people scared enough to turn out and vote for her. She's divided the heck out of the party and she just keeps dividing it more.
Congrats, Bob!
now that is funny because that is sadly the truth of it. i mean like the tone in a movie or a film alot of politicians have to "go to the polls" to see what the "public" thinks. it's interesting to see how the media is calling obama "the change" when in fact i am thinking that hillary is "the change". it's truly amazing that an afro-american male and a female are running for president, too bad that hillary and obama couldn't just team up and have this election be a slam dunk that would be the ultimate election ballot.
i don't think that all people know about the voting polls and honestly do you really think the public truly knows all of either parties platform?!?!!? i mean not everyone in the world has web access nor goes out and "reads up/researches" their potential chosen candidate ya know!?!?!
i mean alot of people actually believe what's in the f*cking news and what is on the television in those campaign ads. alot of the people do sound like sheep but doesn't that mean that those ad campaigns are working!!! the polls may show obama ahead in NH but see what happened in those 48 hours, hillary kicked some NH ass!! i am indifferent to the polls and i can see how annoying as some of the calls can be but you have to admit that any campaign should not even for a second take the polls as gospel, that would be detrimental to a candidates election. there is too much margin for error as NH proves. so, in a sense it's a good idea to form an opinion but not necessarily a great way to use them as the way an election might turn out. hillary has a solid campaign format and i like alot of what obama stands for but to me i think hillary might win this because she has the mentality like a race horse. "in it for the long haul".
I'm sure there are a great many Americans like myself who decided a long time ago to vote for Hillary Clinton.
I'm not going to let bloggers, pundits, talking heads, polls or negative ads change that.
Good luck Hillary, and you've got my one measly vote.
If Hillary can divide the democratic party into so many people hating her, imagine how much hate she will generate if she gets the nomination?
Yeah, she's the most "electible".
And I'm the world's first trillionaire.
Did you guys know that more than 52% of the eligible voters in NH came out to vote? That's almost 50% more than last time. Sounds a might supicious to me--I've been one of those eligible voters for more than 30-years. I say recount! True it was a most pleasant day to vote; balmy I'd say. Maybe that was enough to push vote count up. But I believe it was that we did not want someone who thought herself to be "entitled" to be President, rather someone who is fresh, not have pre-set ideas on how to be President, and who might just truly put us little guys at the top of the classes for a change. Obama may have come in second, but not by much; Hillary only got the sympathy vote, which will not carry forth in the future, mark my words. Jimmy, Concord, NH
The part I liked was all the questioning of the "wisdom of the polls."
Polls serve an ignoble purpose. They condition what people think by telling them what everyone else supposedly thinks. Examples are rife in which poll reporting changed the impulse of an election.
My prescription: jam the polls. When asked who you would or did vote for, give them nonsense.
-------
Kill your TV, and free your mind.
The best thing to do is read Barney Franks piece today and see what "The old fight" was about. Hiullary knows how the right wing echo chamber works and has had years of countering it....Barack is a neophyte and if he is the Dem nominee he will get pulverized chewed up and spit out and we will have another 4 to 8 years of this crap. With Hillary we may actually have a natioanl health care plan by 2012.
I'm so sick of this line. Osama is going to continue being a terrorist no matter what we do or who we elect.
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